by Robert Irwin
Contents
Title
May
June
August
Copyright
Friday, May 12, 1967
The Master has commanded me to keep a diary. It’s part of my apprenticeship in the way of the sorcerer. Yesterday evening I was accepted as a probationer for Adepthood and the Master inscribed a cabalistic-looking sigil on my diary-writing hand. Today I went and scored this notebook in W.H. Smith’s in High Holborn. (Apparently we sorcerers use black notebooks as diaries, but red notebooks for transcribing spells and exorcisms.) Then went over to the LSE, but still a sit-in, so library closed. What a drag! So split from there and went up to Senate House and borrowed some stuff from its library. I am indeed a ‘profound and diligent searcher’. According to The Goetia of the Lemegeton of King Solomon, ‘Magic is the Highest, most Absolute, and most Divine Knowledge of Natural Philosophy, advanced in its works and wonderful operations by a right understanding of the inward and occult virtue of things; so that true Agents being applied to proper Patients, strange and admirable effects will thereby be produced. Whence magicians are profound and diligent searchers into Nature; they, because of their skill, know how to anticipate an effect, the which to the vulgar shall seem to be a miracle.’ Saw from the news-stand Brian Jones was busted. The other Stones are being tried at Chichester.
I went round to Sally with the news, but she knew all about Brian Jones, for Mr Cosmic was already there. He too had his black and red notebooks. What he also had was three bundles of leafy twigs wrapped up in a damp cloth. This was qat – not only is the u in ‘qat’ silent, it is also invisible. (If the Yemeni Arabs can do without the u, then so can I. Why does there always have to be a fucking u after every fucking q? That is my qestion.) Cosmic scored this qat from a couple of Yemeni sailors in Shadwell and apparently it is completely legal. Having now tried it, I am not surprised, as it’s no big deal, no big blast and no hallucinations. Under Cosmic’s instructions, we stripped the branches of their leaves and we each stuffed them in one of our cheeks, leaf by leaf, until the three of us looked like lop-sided marmosets. Ghastly bitter taste – only drinking powdered and boiled opium is worse in my experience. Bert Jansch was moodily brooding on the record player. We kept taking sips of water as we sat with this foul stuff bulging and drooling out of our mouths for a couple of hours, trying not to gag, and all we got from this was a very mild high, plus in my case I was having lots and lots of thoughts – more thoughts than I had words for – but the trouble was that they were all sane thoughts, whereas I only really like my thoughts when they are fucking weird.
The one thing about qat was that it did make us conversational. Sally was cruelly reminiscing about some of our earlier dud trips – like the time we tried smoking dried banana skins – a real bummer that. Or the time I met someone who had got a three-hour erection from sniffing aircraft glue. So I went with Sally to a model shop to score some of this stuff and we tried sniffing this glue for hours without any payoff whatsoever. In the end we went back to the shop and bought a kit for making a Sopwith Camel, so we could use up the glue. At least making the aeroplane was a buzz. But the general rule of thumb is that legal highs are always downers.
Then Sally wanted to know about the notebooks and we explained how everybody in the Lodge has to keep diaries as part of the training and how everything has to go in, especially the bad things. Sally did not approve as she does not like being in other people’s diaries (which, for her, is like being in someone else’s dream when she doesn’t want to be). And, besides, she has come to hate everything to do with the Black Book Lodge. But she did say that it would be nice for us to look back on these diaries in our old age.
‘I am not reckoning on reaching old age,’ I said. ‘When Saint-Just went to the guillotine, he told the blood-hungry mob who were milling round his tumbril that he was dying at the age of thirty-three which is the age that all true revolutionaries die at, as Jesus was thirty-three when he was crucified. I am definitely not planning to live beyond thirty-three.’
Sally was unimpressed. ‘Thirty-three is quite old,’ she said. ‘I bet you anything I die before you.’
Then there was a long silence – which, given we were on this chatty qat stuff, was unusual.
Then Sally said, ‘Peter, promise me one thing.’
‘What?’
‘You have to promise before I tell you.’
‘I am not promising anything without knowing first what it is.’
‘You have to promise first. You have to be blindly committed, if you love me … ’
I hate Sally’s little tests, but ‘OK,’ I said.
‘You swear?’
‘Yes, I swear.’
Sally’s eyes had a strange kind of glow to them and with all that stuff in her mouth she looked quite freaky.
‘That’s good,’ she said. ‘You have promised that if I die before you, you will screw me when I’m dead.’
‘Bugger that! No way!’
‘You have sworn to do it. It will be my final gift to you. You should do it while my body is still warm.’ Sally was smiling faintly. ‘Otherwise I will come back to haunt you.’
Cosmic was quite enthused,
‘He should carry your corpse out into some park or garden. Your face is wet with tears, but they are his tears. Your body without its animating spirit is somehow heavier than when alive and he staggers a little under its weight. There is a rumble of thunder, as if God himself is angered by what is about to happen. It begins to rain … ’
Now I chime in,
‘Heedless of the rain, I lay the body reverently down on the grass and pull up the skirt, but it is difficult getting the knickers off a corpse, as the legs are so stiff. Rigor mortis … ’
‘Rigor mortis is actually a big come-on and he is surprised to find that his prick is as stiff as your body. He thrusts into you and, as he does, your body jolts upwards and your arms flop round his neck. For a ghastly moment … ’
‘For a ghastly moment I have the horrific illusion that you have come back from Hell to claim me for the dead (who are always hungry for new members) but your apparent gesture of affection is only a final meaningless spasm caused by contracting muscles. My … ’
‘His seed is in your corpse. Under the earth, in the coffin, the foetus germinated by your accursed union begins to grow. As your body rots, the foetus feeds off your deliquescing juices and, by the time the host body has no meat left on it, this subterranean mannikin, who is your unnatural love child, will have learned to supplement its diet with worms and termites. For a long time, it will incubate in the cool earth. Then … ’
‘Then one dark wintry day the earth will crack open and it will come up blindly looking for its father … ’
‘I hate the way you two refer to our future child as an it,’ interrupted Sally. ‘I think she will be a girl. Anyway I just fancy being shafted when I’m dead.’
‘Definitely something to look forward to,’ said Cosmic.
That was the end then of my riff with Cosmic. We quite often do these fantasy riffs – like two guitarists improvising at a jam session.
Then Cosmic was talking about how he had read in the autobiography of the sixteenth-century occultist, Jerome Cardan, that demons inhabit fresh corpses in order to have sex with people. Cosmic is very widely read. Also he was saying that necrophilia might well be one of the things we have to do in the Black Book Lodge as some kind of initiatory ordeal. It is best to start thinking about such things now, so that we get used to the idea.
As I say, qat was a big disappointment. I was looking forward to lots of oriental-flavoured hallucinations, but none turned up. The coming down was as good as anything. Coming down has its gentle melancholy aspect which is generally p
leasant. I grok coming down from drugs and registering the ordinary suchness of things around me. Sally, who has been reading Zen poetry recently, has picked up a whole lot of technical vocabulary in Japanese to describe the quiet moods we get when coming down. Wabi is the basic grokking of the ordinary suchness of things – like seeing the kettle and the lime-scale on the kettle and accepting that as it is. Then there is aware, which has a quiet sense of the pastness of things – like you might be remembering the time, years ago, when the kettle had no lime-scale. Sabi is seeing everything as lonely and detached. Even in a room with Sally and Cosmic, I am on my own. I am not connected to anything – not even the kettle I am looking at. Finally, there is yugen which is a sense of deep mystery. It is a pure sense of mystery, so that even what is mysterious is mysterious.
Cosmic shuffled out, heading back to his pad and I became aware that I was very aware, i.e. sad about the pastness of the day, which was now gone like a bubble which was floating in the air but then has suddenly popped. In bed tonight Sally insisted on pretending to be a corpse, because she said I would need the practice. It might have been fun for her, but she made it really difficult for me. I wish I hadn’t made that promise. Still, she is younger than me and women usually live longer than men. When it was over, Sally passed from shamming dead straight into sleep. Unable to sleep for her snoring, I started writing this, my diary. It has taken ages to get all this down. I doubt if I will be able to keep on writing my diary at this level of detail.
Saturday, May 13
Copied stuff from The Goetia of the Lemegeton of King Solomon into my notebook, but it was pretty boring, so goofed off with Sally to King’s Road. Walked past Granville’s shop, but he never seems to be there. It’s always some manky assistant. Shopped with Sally. I was going to buy her ‘Simon Smith and His Amazing Dancing Bear’, but then I scored Jeff Beck’s ‘Silver Lining’ as well, because Sally’s ‘everywhere and nowhere’ and she wears ‘a hippy hat’. Then at her pad for a bit, before going dancing at Middle Earth. This time Sally wanted to know what was the most horrific thing I could possibly imagine. I said that it was being naked and sliding down a banister studded with razor-blades. Subsequently however, I had another thought connected with yesterday’s necrophily business. What would really hang me up – what would be the most horrific thing I could imagine is not the razor-blade slide, nor for that matter having sex with a corpse, but having sex with someone who is middle-aged. It is horrible to contemplate the rubbing of paunches together, the flapping withered dugs, the worry about whether to take the dentures out before or after. She would be middle-aged, but the ultimate horror is that I would be middle-aged too. It does not bear thinking about – like one’s parents having sex. Split around 4. Went over to Arts Lab and used its cinema as a crash pad as usual.
Sunday, May 14
Up at ‘the crack of dawn’, but, for some reason, dawn did not crack for me until three o’clock in the afternoon. More of the social construction of reality which is hard going. Also taking notes on Crowley’s Magick in Theory and Practice and practising my fingering on the guitar. Perhaps this year will determine whether I become a sociologist or go on the road. Raining.
After I had written the above down, Sally came round with Cosmic. They had succeeded in scoring mandies. At least one knows what one is getting with mandies – a nice reliable downer which infallibly delivers an agreeable woozy feeling. Good for sex too. I often find the big white pills a bit difficult to swallow, but it’s worth it. I think one of the reasons I like this drug is that the name mandrax makes me think of mandrakes. Of course, there is Mandrake the Magician in the comics, with his shiny top-hat and cloak. (I sometimes fantasise that I am Mandrake. Sally is Princess Narda and Cosmic is Lothar, my faithful companion and the three of us have bizarre adventures in Drugsland.) But there is also the fork-rooted plant which is used by witches and other folk. It used to be thought that the mandrake was the seed of a man hanged on a gallows. I haven’t got round to trying mandrake yet, but Cosmic has. He once scored it from a herbalist in the Old Kent Road. It is fairly dangerous. One can go mad on it and its smell was pretty terrible, so he only took a small amount. Mandrake was what used to give witches the illusion they were flying about on broomsticks. Cosmic got the flying sensation a bit, before he was painfully sick.
Anyway rapping on mandies was a good scene and Cosmic and I went off on another of our riffs. I had been saying that I could not understand why women ever had sex with men, as women were much nicer. Who could ever really fancy a man – all that hardness and hairiness?
‘Pooves can,’ said Cosmic.
‘I can’t stand pooves,’ I replied.
‘That is your hang-up,’ said Cosmic. ‘If you are going to make any progress on the occult path, you have to make yourself ready for anything. The astral is no place to be having bourgeois inhibitions.’
‘But it is so revolting – poking about in people’s arses!’
‘Unnatural sex is customarily used to generate occult energies. You’ve read your Crowley.’
(Actually I haven’t much. It’s Cosmic who avidly reads all that stuff. Cosmic who, unlike me, has not had the benefit of a formal education, is a self-made freak. He has pulled himself up by his own bootstraps to become like a sort of guru on the Bardo Thodol, auras, kundalini sex and shoplifting.)
‘If you are going to get anywhere in Satanism you have to get used to the idea,’ Cosmic continued. ‘It is an integral part of making the dark forces work for you. After all the Prince of Darkness is himself a horny poove.’
‘A horny poove,’ Sally muttered reverently.
‘And one bleak afternoon in winter, he will come looking for you,’ continued Cosmic. ‘You will be walking on Hampstead Heath. You are alone and wish you were not. Then you see that you may not be alone after all. A man – the figure is a bit indistinct – but you think it is a man – is on the path below. He is looking up the hill at you and he is gesturing to you. Then as you watch you see him start to make his way up the path towards you … ’
‘I decide not to wait for him. He, whoever he is, cannot possibly want anything from me. I take a path to the left into the trees. I am walking quite fast and I am optimistic that this man will not persist in his pursuit of me – if indeed it is a pursuit. But then when I look back, I see that he too has entered the little wood and that he is gaining on me. I break into a run. When I next look back … ’
‘When you next look back you see that he has broken into a run too and there is something a little odd about the way he runs. It is a kind of stagger for the Devil has remarkably wide hips and you catch a glimpse of his long prick and wizened scrotum swinging between his legs as he lurches behind you … ’
‘The distance between us is diminishing. With a muffled sob, I throw myself off the path and plunge into the bushes. This was a mistake. The branches catch at my clothes. My face, as it becomes studded with thorns, runs with blood. I have a vague sense of tiny monstrous creatures under foot. The wood is alive with whispering things. Then I am tripped by a branch and the Devil, red-eyed and snout-faced, is upon me. I am hot and flushed. Too breathless to speak, I look up at him and with my eyes, I appeal for mercy. But he, perversely misunderstanding the nature of my appeal, rips at my silver shirt. At the last moment I muster enough breath to cry, “Get thee behind me, Satan!” … ’
‘And he takes you at your word and, rolling you over on your bed of thorns and leaves, he yanks your white flared jeans down. With his claws he pulls the cheeks of your arse apart and sets to coldly sodomising you. The Devil’s prick is very long and cold, like a meat-flavoured popsicle, and, sobbing and sighing with exhaustion and shame, you surrender to its icy assault. Yeah, that’s what sex with the Devil is going to be like!’
‘At least it was not raining,’ I said.
‘Unlike the time you slept with Sally’s corpse,’ Cosmic added.
(It was typical of me to add, ‘At least it was not raining.’ Whenever anything bad happ
ens to me, I always immediately come up with an ‘At-least-it’s not’, kind of thought. Like if I miss a bus, I might think ‘At least the lecture I am going to be late for is on a boring subject’. If I ever end up having both my legs amputated, I shall probably find myself thinking, ‘At least I have still got all my own teeth’. When I heard of my mother’s cancer, I noticed that immediately I thought, ‘At least I haven’t got it too’. I am very aware of such thoughts. If it is possible to achieve total Enlightenment through sheer introspection, then I reckon I’m in the running for total Enlightenment.)
At the end of our riff, Cosmic was rabbiting on about how occultists teach that the Devil has no prick of his own, so, whenever he wants sex, he manufactures a temporary prick out of condensed vapours. Also about how the Devil’s prick is very thin – just like Cosmic’s. Cosmic’s prick is short and thin and he was thinking of setting up a League of Men with Small Penises … But all this talk of pervy sex was making Sally desperately randy. So she hustled him out of my room on the pretext that we were sleepy and wanted to go to bed. Then she threw herself on me, saying that she wanted me inside her straightaway, so I hastily started picking her nose, but apparently this sort of penetration was not what she had in mind. Then I attempted normal screwing, but this was not what she had in mind either. Tonight she wanted to do it doggy style and she was woofing joyously as I mounted her from behind. Even when it was over she was still playing at being a bitch, rolling over to have her tummy rubbed and then vigorously licking my face. Next she was going to practice peeing like a dog in the bath, but I managed to dissuade her from this. Her current manner of peeing is bad enough, God knows. Sally has got it into her head that it is degrading for women to have to pee sitting down, so she now pees standing up, straddling wide and with her pelvis thrust forward, but it can be a pretty messy business. I expect she will get better with practice – plus she should give up wearing tights.
